Category: Art

Monoprint

IT RARE for me to produce any kind of print so I took the opportunity of joining the children who were making monoprints from thin sheets of expanded polystyrene in the Faceless theatre company tent at today’s Horbury Show. My friend John Welding has designed the artwork on the tent, which is a cross between a bouncy castle and a large igloo so I decided to draw that as simply as I could on paper (along with the Faceless 9ft tall Heron and accompanying Ornithologist, who had just made a tour of the showground), then traced it through to the other side of the paper to get a reversed image, before scoring the lines through onto the polystyrene.

I’d greatly overestimated the ability of the bobbly textured polystyrene to produce a fine line so John’s design of interlinked hands doesn’t show at all but, there you are, a finished print in 30 minutes or so.

The Boathouse

We took a walk around Newmillerdam this afternoon and discovered that the Friends of Newmillerdam were serving hot drinks and cakes so I was able to sit and sketch an oak tree from a cafe table at the lakeside.

Catching up

Burton Agnes Hall, near Bridlington, drawn when my friend Helen Thomas spent a week as an artist in residence there.

I’VE BEEN catching up with my holiday diary for Corfu today. I wanted to write about the experience while it was still fresh in my mind but I don’t think that I’ve done anything like justice to impressions that the island made on me.

After catching up with book orders, accounts, the garden, jobs around the house and doing a refresher course on Dreamweaver since I got back, not to mention attending a wedding and a funeral within four days of each other, I’m looking forward to getting back to work on my next book.

To draw a line under a rather disrupted month, here are the meagre contents of my recent sketchbooks, the drawings that didn’t make it into my online journal.

Langsett Moor, drawn from a photograph taken on a recent walk.

On the radio today there was an article on the increase in sales of fountain pens. Some specialist shops report a doubling of sales. I can see the attraction, they often give you a more fluid feel as you write or draw, so it’s very suitable for quick sketches like this Blackbird preening, which I drew when we took my mum for lunch at the Bella Italia at Birstall. I like restaurants where you can bird watch as you eat.

The bar at the Bella Italia, Birstall, drawn with my new Safari fountain pen.
Sowthistle

I went back to ArtPen, the one filled with Noodlers waterproof black ink, for these last two drawings, again drawn while we were out and about with my mum. These were drawn in my new 8 inch square format sketchbook but I’d forgotten to put a spare set of watercolours in the bag that fits it, so they’ll have to stay in black and white.

Bella Coffee

I’M STILL getting used to my new pen, the Lamy Safari fountain pen. It’s great for writing because it flows so smoothly and the slightly italic nib gives a consistent broad downstroke and fine sidestroke but this presents a bit of a problem when drawing because it keeps wanting to go with its natural flow. For drawing I’m used to a pen which will happily go off in any direction, like the ArtPen with its sketch nib or a fibre tipped drawing pen. But I think that the Safari has possibilities either for a simpler and bolder approach, aiming at the sort of ‘clear line’ Hergé used in the Tintin comic strips (yes, wouldn’t it be great if a pen could help me draw like that! I guess you have to apply a certain amount of intellectual rigour as well as change your pen) or alternatively go the other way and try for a lighter, more diffident line.
For the moment I’ll have to make do with plain awkward.

Rhubarb

I WANTED to draw something in the garden but nothing too fussy so at this time of year an obvious subject is the newly unfurled leaves of Rhubarb. Some are still looking crinkly from recently unpacking themselves from the folded-up form that emerged from the bud.

The glossy elephant’s ears leaves bring a touch of the luxuriantly exotic to the vegetable garden, flouncing around by the hedge with the kind of grand, swaggering gestures that you’d find in Baroque theatre or Elizabethan costume.

The pattern of veins with sections of puckered leaf surface between reminded me of the river valleys and hills of Europe that I’d been sketching from the plane a couple of weeks ago.

I was intending to stick purely to line and I didn’t want to add watercolour but by the time I’d finished a few leaves my drawing was looking like a map so I added cross hatching in the gaps between the leaf margins and indicated some of the shadows from the afternoon sun to give some clues to the way the leaves are arranged relative to each other in space.

Being right-handed I started in the top left corner and worked my way across. Theoretically I could have continued in this fashion, piecing my subject together from interlocking shapes like a jigsaw but my attention soon wavered and by the time I got to the large leaf in the centre of the top row I went drastically wrong in scale. I’ve left my mistake in the drawing so that you can see that at my first attempt I drew the main leaf vein about two thirds of the size it should be and 2 centimetres to the left of where it should have been on the page.

I realised that however relaxing this drawing was supposed to be I needed a strategy to tackle such a convoluted subject so I started by indicating the main veins before getting involved in the subsidiary details.

It sounds like a controlled process but the outlines and veins make what might appear to be a still life feel as if it’s animated. I felt as I imagine a novice skier must feel if they attempt to go straight from the nursery slopes onto the red routes. A feeling of controlled chaos.

The lighting was consistent and there was little breeze and little to distract me other than a sparrow chirping in the hedge above the rhubarb.

Imitate the Action of a Tiger

Thinking about the need for a degree of determination even when you’re doing something that is supposedly relaxing, after I drew this I was listening to a short talk on Radio 3 by choral music conductor Gareth Malone who said that when he had a big performance to conduct on the way to the concert hall he would read the ‘Once more unto the breach dear friends!’ speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V on his mobile phone. Not that singing is like fighting but he feels that he needs to instill in his choir some spirit and determination.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon . . .
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

I know what he means because you need something of that sense of attack when tackling a drawing. You’ve somehow got to keep that ‘stillness and humility’ but also harness the controlled energy suggested in the line about ‘greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start’. Relaxed concentration is what I usually call it, but that’s what the ‘action of the tiger’ appears to be when you see one hunting in a wildlife documentary; fluid movement and observant determination.

Drawing Pen

I used a Pilot Drawing Pen with an 08 nib for the rhubarb drawing which contains waterproof, light resistant brown DR pigment ink. When drawing botanical details I’d normally go for the finer 01 size nib but I wanted a more expressive and relaxed line here.

For me this 08 nib might be the nearest that I’ll get to the feel of a fountain pen when using a fibre tip. I tend to wear down the fibre tips before the ink in the pen runs out, perhaps because I’m using too much pressure or because I’m drawing on slightly toothed acid free cartridge paper. I soon find that I have to hold the pen vertically to get a consistent line out of it. I’m hoping that the larger tip size will enable me to draw at an angle for longer. Perhaps a proportionally larger tip in relation to the size of the ink reservoir helps give a smoother flow.

Links Gareth Malone, Pilot Drawing Pen

The Chocolate Brown Sketchbook

AFTER THE appropriately aubergine-coloured sketchbook that I used for our week in Greece, I’m starting a new pocket-sized sketchbook for urban excursions. At A6, about 4 x 6 inches, it’s no bigger than a chunky bar of chocolate and it has a chocolate-coloured banana paper cover.

A6 Pink Pig sketchbook

It’s literally a pocket-sized sketchbook and I’m trying to decide what would be the most portable form of colour to go with it.

This morning I took an ArtPen tin loaded with a selection of a dozen watercolour crayons but, for a subject like this anyway, they don’t work as well as watercolours. I try to mix an approximation for the grey of the sky by shading it with the lightest blue and ochre that my small selection of crayons allow.

I don’t find crayons anywhere near as versatile as watercolours. With watercolours you can add the smallest speck of ochre, crimson or blue to a grey mix to get the colour you’re after. You can then add water to get the tone or gradation of tones that you need.

Birdstrike

‘PTOMPH!

It’s happened again; a Goldfinch hits the patio windows and lies senseless on the patio. Luckily by the time we’ve had breakfast it has gradually recovered, looked around and, though we didn’t see it go, flown off.

In the afternoon it’s a Wood Pigeon that hits the window, leaving a dusty outline of its wingspan and a powder puff impression of it’s breast. The Wood Pigeons do this fairly regularly but never seem to come to any harm.

The photograph is the impression of a bird that hit the patio windows 6 weeks ago. You can even see an eye-ring in this picture. It might have been another pigeon but the eye-ring reminds me of a Sparrowhawk.

On the morning that this appeared a smaller impression, perhaps a Goldfinch appeared on the other window.

When you see the two impressions together it looks to me as if both birds hit the window together, the hawk chasing the finch.

In this over-enhanced version you can speculate that the Goldfinch had been on the feeder and the Sparrowhawk had swooped over the hedge. A moment of drama captured in feather impressions.

Kingcups

I’M NOT FINDING pen and Indian ink a responsive medium as I draw these Kingcups by the pond. If I don’t press heavily enough on the paper I don’t get a mark but if I press too hard on the springy nib the pressure builds up for a moment and then – whizz! – the nib sets off and draws a straighter line than I’d intended!

Surely, if I keep at it, I can exercise some relaxed control over the recalcitrant medium. The ink soon goes claggy and even during this short session of drawing I have to pause to clean the coagulating Winsor & Newton black ink from the nib.

Is it the beautifully sunny but not sultry weather that’s drying the ink too quickly or is it the shrill excited scream every five seconds of next door’s children playing happily on a trampoline a few yards away that’s putting me off my stroke?

I think that I’ve been spoilt by the predictably flowing combination of ArtPen and Noodler’s ink. It’s second nature to draw with that combination, but I would like to experiment with different mediums, which create different marks.

Anyway, time to admit defeat, perhaps I’ll add some colour later when it’s a bit quieter!

Black Bag

I’VE DRAWN this in dip pen and Winsor & Newton Indian ink then added a premixed ink wash. I used this method for my High Peak Drifter sketchbook, taking four small plastic containers of pale to dark washes with me.

This proved ideal for subjects in the Dark Peak in late winter and early spring, such as drystone walls and running water and places like Thor’s Cave but as summer approached it seemed wilfully contradictory to use the same monochrome treatment for wild flowers and butterflies. But I stuck with it to the final page, drawn one sultry early summer’s evening at Jacob’s Ladder, the zig-zag path that climbs up to the Kinderscout plateau.

I recently kitted myself out with a fresh batch of Pink Pig cartridge paper sketchbooks in a range of sizes and my plan is to have art-bags ready to go in a small (A6), medium (A5) and largish (A4) sizes.

I’m still looking for a bag that is suitably compact for an A6 sketching kit, perhaps it will all go into a wallet and fit into my pocket. My growing collection of art-bags tend to flop around the studio, usually getting parked on a chair, so I’ve attached a hook to the wall and hung them there, ready to grab one depending on exactly where I’m heading;

  • A National Trust organiser bag in natural canvas is ideal for what I intend to be my natural history sketchbook, an A5 landscape format spiral bound Pink Pig.
  • The black Timberland backpack, a birthday present from a friend last week, is the one that I’d use for more ambitious outings, perhaps to draw whole landscapes rather than smaller details. The bag is designed to hold a laptop, so there’s plenty of room for my A4 landscape format sketchbook and it has extra compartments so that I have the option to include some more ambitious media, dip pen and bottle of ink rather than my habitual fountain pen for instance.
  • Finally, hanging like a shadow behind the National Trust organiser in my sketch, there’s the black shoulder bag (described as a ‘fisherman’s bag’) that I bought at Marks & Spencer’s in Glasgow last year. This is my sketchcrawl around town bag, probably the one that I’ll take most on my errands and book deliveries. This fits my new square 8 by 8 inch holly green Pink Pig like a glove.

But the square page of the holly green sketchbook doesn’t accommodate long thin drawings; that’s why my A5 bag ended up hanging out of frame off the bottom of the page! (Pink Pig do some quirky long thin sizes, perhaps I should go for one of them for tall, thin subjects).

Rubber Stamped


My first attempt at a pen and wash effect using the filters in 'Photoshop'.

MY ILLUSTRATOR friend John Welding was telling me about a science fiction short story from years ago about a world where instead of having to go to the trouble of drawing things artists had only to dial up the appropriate rubber stamp.

That day has arrived because the new version of Photoshop that I’m using includes a stamp filter (left). So much quicker than making your own lino-cut.

Filter Gallery

I’m new to this version of Photoshop so this is the first chance that I’ve had to play around with the Filter Gallery, which is useful as you get instant full size previews of the effects of the filters on offer. By using slider controls you can fine tune the effect.

The Watercolour Filter (left) simplifies the photograph to blocky colour.

To get the effect of a pen and watercolour wash drawing you need to add line. In Photoshop, as with most other image manipulation programs, you do this on a new layer.

Find Edges

This time the filter you need, ‘Find Edges’, doesn’t appear in the Filter Gallery; you’ll find in the Filter Menu under ‘Stylize’.

This gives you rather more than the pure line that you’re after (right), even if you try converting the image to grayscale before you start as I did in this example. There are no slider controls to filter out the tones. You now need to go to . . .

Threshold

To reduce this to pure black and white you need to use the ‘Threshold’ command from the image menu, something I’ve used a lot when scanning my pen and ink artwork when I wanted to print it in line rather than tone.

Just to keep you on your toes, the Threshold command can’t be found amongst the Filters. It’s in the Image menu under Adjustments. Like most of the filters this has a slider control so you can go from almost black to almost washed out.

The ‘pen’ layer, as you might expect, needs to go on top of the ‘watercolour’ layer but to make it transparent you have to set the ‘pen’ layers properties to ‘Multiply’ instead of ‘Normal’ (top).

The finished result wouldn’t convince anybody that I’d used real pen and ink and watercolours but I love that chunky effect and I’d be tempted to use it when I’m painting real watercolours.

Lantern and Leaf

WE CALL at our niece Sarah’s new house in Wakefield and, while chatting over tea and homemade cupcakes, I draw this lantern and leaf.

Just as I’m uploading these sketches back in my studio I catch sight of a silhouette against the blue sky; a Buzzard soars across above me.

That’s the kind of thing that I was hoping that I’d see more of when I moved my computer to this end of the studio by the metre square Velux window in the mansard roof.

I notice that the cock Pheasant has now broken off his bowing and bullying display to a hen Pheasant who was sitting on the plank bench in the corner of my meadow area. He was strutting and bowing on the ground below the bench.

Every year I think that I might get around to doing a decent drawing of the Snowdrops, to start the season as I’d like to go on but, as in previous years, I’ve left it just that little bit too late and they’re already past their best. Those in the shade of the hedge look the freshest.

Put Your Feet Up & Draw

I’ve drawn my left hand so many times while in waiting rooms but drawing my feet is better left until I’m relaxing at home. As I said the other day, I’m enjoying these pen and ink drawings, although here I’m back to ArtPen rather than pen and Indian Ink.

I was taking a look at a Photoshop magazine in the supermarket. Most of the projects don’t appeal to me as they tend to focus on touching up portraits or adding surrealist flourishes to photographs but a step-by-step workshop on turning a photograph of plant pots on greenhouse staging into pen and wash appealed to my both in its subject and its treatment.

Put simply, I gathered as I scanned the pages with no intention of buying the magazine (this is a man thing according to a woman we were talking to the other day), you use a filter that selects edges only then tweak it a bit to give a pen and ink effect and you add a free watercolour layer by hand. It was remarkably effective in reproducing the free and easy charm of pen and wash.

Even taking a close look at the final drawing I think that I would have assumed it was hand drawn but it raises the question of why would you wish to deny yourself the pleasure of hand-drawing all those shapes.

Talking of Photoshop tutorials, the box that I drew around my drawing was prompted by Daniel Fieske’s Gnome tutorial that I followed through the other day. As I was trying to build up tone in my drawing in the weave of the jeans, the knitting of the socks and the out of focus background, it made sense to add an edge, rather than fade out in a vignette and have the tone fade out too.

I’m  very literal when it comes to drawing and you might say well there’s no box around subjects in real life but then there aren’t outlines, stipples and cross-hatchings either. As with Fieske’s Gnome I’m actually conjuring up a little world in any sketch even when I’m following what I can see with reasonable care and attention. The frame helps suggest that this should be taken as a view into a little world (in this case a rather unappealing corner of a world occupied by my feet).

I’m sure that I’ll get launched again on my book work soon and I wish that I could keep this kind of looseness and animation going in my illustrations, which will be in pen and ink. I seem to stiffen up my style and become rather earnest and uptight when I know that I’m working for publication.

Books and Binoculars

STRAIGHT FORWARD pen and ink drawings appeal to me at the moment as I try to settle back into creative work after our home improvements and the practice I’ve been putting in to find my way around the new computer.

This time I’m testing an old bottle of Nan-King Indian Ink and it’s still free-flowing – perhaps a bit too free flowing as I spill a drop of it from an overloaded nib.

I like drawing with no end use in mind, well apart from scanning it for this online drawing journal, because I can be freer with technique; it doesn’t matter if things turn out looking a bit odd because it’s not a commission and it’s not needed for a book. A bit of hatching here, a bit of stippling there. If one side of the binoculars doesn’t work out quiet right I can experiment with the other side.

A flexible arm magnifier on the top shelf, a microscope on the bottom and the binoculars in between suggest my interest, obsession almost, for looking at the world in close up and at a distance and that’s confirmed by the books on this end of the shelf, on botany, birds and landforms.

See How They Grow

As I’ve been reorganising my shelves, I’ve been tempted to read some old natural history books recently. Books that I bought as a student 40 years ago, which I still hadn’t got around to reading. I’ve caught up on Rachel Carson’s Between the Tides and I’m currently on See How They Grow, an illustrated popular introduction to plants published in 1952 and based on a series of time lapse films on plant growth shown in cinemas. Television was only then becoming established in Britain, given a boost by the live broadcast of the coronation the previous year.

I hadn’t realised how far back natural history filmmaking went. One of the three authors of See How They Grow was F. Percy Smith.  He ‘started film work with Charles Urban in 1908 and in 1925 was engaged in making Secrets of Life and Secrets of Nature films. He always worked alone or with one assistant, using relic cameras and home-made apparatus, and published over 200 subjects varying from popular nature films to specialised technical ones. He died as a result of bombing towards the end of World War II but still has an international reputation as a master of cine-micrography.’

Link: Percy Smith, British Film Institute